Synopsis

This film recounts the travails of a transsexual prostitute, by examining the various stages in her life, following her from her birth in a development town in Israel’s southern periphery, to her death in Tel Aviv. Eden Alfasi lives in an attic apartment in the city’ s impoverished HaTikvah neighborhood. She builds her life together with a pimp, who plays the role of her husband in a relationship that resembles that of a married couple and a young male prostitute, who plays the role of her son whom she considers/treats like a son. They are both part of her never-ending quest for family and belonging.

Director's Statement

I’ve often wondered about the death of queer cinema in Israel. The 1980s and early 1990s have brought a very bold queer message with them. It was a message of personalized gender, and it flourished. This is dazzlingly apparent in the inimitable films of Amos Guttman, intended to inflame the passions, but also in Ayelet’ s Menahemi’ s landmark short film "Crows".  Suddenly, there was a sense that personal, queer narratives in Israeli cinema offered a significant alternative, paralleling those works focused on themes pertaining to the Jewish nationalist experiment. GLBTQ film suffered a devastating blow with Guttman’s premature death. Since then it seems as if GLBTQ representation in film has come to be dressed up in nationalist themes. film and television alike have since come to be evaluated through military parameters and fertility (such as marriage or childbirth). On the other hand, a more introspective narrative, focused on the complexity of the queer condition has all but disappeared. No longer is there a cinema focused on the uniquely extravagant nature of queer culture, and the dark and turbulent circus that defines its travails. GLBTQ normativity in cinema came with a steep price. In order to gain admittance into Israeli society, every alternative queer work that happened to be thrashing about was abandoned. The form itself practically vanished from the Israeli cultural map. This includes works that were especially important to me – particularly as I dealt with my own emergence as a young gay man and artist. The process of developing this project is a miracle in itself. The producer and I approached Guttman’s family to gain access to his archive hoping to have a glimpse at his creative process and possibly find some more interesting materials that would shed light on his life and oeuvre.